The Round Mound of Beantown — The Quest to Figure out if Grant Williams’ Versatility Outweighs his Weaknesses
This was originally posted on Reddit on April 19, 2021. The stats are a little outdated, but not by much. I think the point still stands.
On March 2nd, the Celtics beat the Clippers for what would be the 3rd win in a rare 4 game win streak just before the All Star Break. The game was notable for Jeff Teague saving the day, but for Grant Williams, it represented the nadir of his professional career to that point. Grant had been a DNP-Coach’s Decision 5 out of the last 10 games. In the games he did play, his play could be best characterized as somewhere between inconsistent and offensive (not in the “scoring buckets” way, in the “I feel personally attacked watching him play basketball” way). You can almost picture Grant getting back to his swanky apartment, pouring a glass of wine, and contemplating whether he even felt like loading up the Steam version of Settlers of Catan.
Two days later, Grant would play against Toronto, and save his season with a 17 and 4 performance where he would shoot 3/4 from 3. From that point on, March 4th to Today, Grant has not logged a single DNP-CD, and has been averaging a pretty robust 19 minutes a game.
Tale of Two Seasons
The weird part, and the part that makes Grant so interesting, is that his shooting % have fallen off a cliff all the while his playing time has risen (or maybe more correctly, become more consistent, when he played earlier in the year, it was usually a decent amount). Let’s look at the stats.
These stats are bordering on bizarre (parentheticals are his rank on the team). If you looked at his raw stats without the net rating, you’d probably think he’s been considerably worse, but that jump in Net Rating is pretty undeniable, especially given that it comes when Grant is playing more, not less. There may be some statistical noise, and maybe Grant has been on the floor for some lucky runs here and there, but this is over a month and a half worth of ball. There has to be something there.
Probably the most important attribute Grant possesses is that he is, at least theoretically, versatile at both ends. On the surface, Grant can solve a lot of problems. He’s the size of a wing, but the width of a center, for better or worse. Unsurprisingly, he logs almost all of his minutes as the nominal 4 (his 10 most frequent lineups are will with a center next to him per BBallref).
Offensive Versatility and Futility
Grant is hard to analyze because his weaknesses don’t jump out, and neither do his strengths. He usually makes the right decision, but that’s the frustrating part with Grant. While he makes the right decision almost all the time, he’s usually not quite good enough to capitalize on it. Even still, there are times he’s good enough to capitalize. Let’s dig into some video to show you what I mean.
For such a uniquely shaped guy, Grant has some legitimate ball skills.. This is a pretty nice play, ball fake, pump fake, quick dribble drive and then on time on target out to the shooter. He’s also flashed some passing chops, here he smartly rolls into the soft spot of the weird zone Minny is playing, takes a hard dribble to draw the defense, and fires a nice pass to PP for an open 3. Maybe my favorite play of Grant’s is this immediate bullet pass to Rob after Tatum sees him open in the corner after a trap (great read by Tatum, almost like some genius redditor wrote about this earlier this month). That’s a heads up, smart play.
He’s big enough to exploit some mismatches down low, but he’s not talented enough to finish regularly, fucking 5 foot nothing Facu Campazzo bothers this layup enough to make him miss. Or here, Grant makes a nice move, but doesn’t have the length or athleticism to get all the way to the rim. Draymond stuffs his shit so bad it leads to an easy Curry layup the other way.
He was making his open/wide open threes, 45.5%/40.9% respectively pre 3/2, but now he’s not really, 18.2%/36.7% (YIKES) since 3/2. He doesn’t have a quick enough trigger from there to really be respected by defenses yet. But still, his offensive rating and net rating have skyrocketed during this time. Maybe the answer is simply, Grant is getting out of the way of our best players. His usage is down from a miniscule 12.1 to a almost non-existent 9.8. Grant can do some stuff on offense, but maybe, at least until he finds his stroke, his best attribute is just giving the ball up to our stars and focusing on defense.
Defensive Versatility — Thiccc and Quick?
Similarly to the offensive end, Grant has flashed the ability to guard a variety of players. I won’t link the video, but just Saturday night, in crunch time, Grant hung with Steph Curry and forced him into a ridiculous off the bounce corner three. He hit it, but there wasn’t much else Grant could do. Of course, he was excellent against Jokic in our win against Denver. I’m not sure there are two more different players in the NBA.
Grant can be slow footed, and his height means he can get bullied down low, although he’s been more sturdy down there recently. Here’s an example of both of those weaknesses on one play. KAT doesn’t even really make a move, he just beats Grant to the spot, who recovers pretty well, but isn’t big enough to block the shot and gets finished over.
The weirdness of Grant’s physique, has played into his foul rate being an issue. He’s just slow enough that he fouls guards on the perimeter, and just small enough that he fouls bigs down low. With that said, he’s getting better. During the 12/23–3/2 stretch he was averaging a crazy 2.8 fouls in just 18 minutes. He’s reduced that to 2.3 even though he’s playing an extra minute. It’s hard to play consistently when you are constantly in foul trouble. Just from my eye test, Grant has started to look more like Playoff Grant (good thing) than early season Grant (BADDDDD THING) lately. He can flash some quick, active hands at times and he’s hard to back down.
Like I said earlier, Grant is a strange player. He isn’t a shooter, but he can make some shots. He isn’t a passer, but he can make some nice passes. He isn’t a great defensive player, but he can play some great defense. It’s almost a possession to possession grab bag on what you are going to get from Grant. With that in mind I’m going to leave you with a play that summarizes Grant Williams better than words possibly could. Grant gets switched onto a guard, picks his pocket, takes it on the break and makes the correct decision, give the ball to Tatum. What results is a bizarre over the shoulder half alley oop that Tatum scoops up and has to dribble out only to bury a three. The process was right, and the result was right, but barely, and right now that seems to be the case with Grant’s minutes.
EDIT: Jokic link was wrong, should be fixed now.
